


Kaylee's story

by neensz



Series: fisher'verse [5]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 17:50:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4796648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neensz/pseuds/neensz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin's whole family died in a car crash when he was 14. </p><p>This is that, from his sister Kaylee's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kaylee's story

**Author's Note:**

> Another thing I found in the depths of my GDrive. 
> 
> This is will likely be insanely triggery for anyone who's ever lost anyone in a car crash.

><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>

My battered canvas jacket is starting to soak up the red from the bed of the truck. Spring in Alaska isn’t actually balmy.

I’m tougher than this. It’s just a little chill.

Hell, I lasted an entire crabbing season on the _Orca_ this winter, and while I’d thought being bait boy (never ever, ever bait _girl_ ) would kill me

> _–thirty hour days in ten degree weather, ice on the deck and in my hair and on my eyelashes, flinging my body into the crab pots to hang the bait bags and hurtling right back out again—“gotta be faster, why the fuck you so slow” —turning myself black and blue and mottled brownyellowgreen from head to toe, slipping and falling on the ice, banging into the struts of the sorting table, getting fingers crushed by pincers I’ve seen crack a broom handle clean in half with my own eyes–_

I survived. I fucking _flourished_. I defy Norm to ever find a better bait boy than me.

><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>

Merlin’s voice is just starting to crack.

He sounds ridiculous, screaming at Mom, his voice going high, low, high, low, squeak. How is she not laughing at him?

I am.

I’m not even trying to hide it. But I’m also in the living room and they’re in the kitchen. I hear noise, not the actual words, but it sounds like they’re working off the usual script:

> MERLIN: I’m a teenager, rawr!
> 
> MOM: Have you done your homework?
> 
> MERLIN: School sucks! I hate you! It’s too easy, I hate you! Why can’t I skip a grade?!
> 
> MOM: Socializing with your peers is important for your development.
> 
> MERLIN: My peers suck! I hate you and wish you'd die! 

He’s always liked reading ahead and knowing how things end.

><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>

A graduation announcement flutters past my face. It’s crumpled, wet; dirty lines permanently marking the wrinkles in the paper. The wind must be strong to pick it up.

> _I visited Denny at college only once, when he graduated. It was weird._
> 
> _Everyone was rushing everywhere like something was on fire._
> 
> _After four years I still didn’t know what Computer Science actually was, but apparently he finally did, because they gave him a degree in it._
> 
> _His graduation was long and boring, and I was the only one from our family who’d come. Everyone else was working or in school or in the lower 48, but I was there._

The sun flashes through the clouds for a second, and the thick paper is frozen in that beam of light. Time stops so I can see the brightness of the red in the wrinkles. It isn’t dirty water. It’s blood. Who bled on their announcement? That’s just rude. Those were expensive. I tease Denny over how much time he spent picking them out, still. I will tease him about it for the rest of his life.

><>       ><>       ><>       ><>       ><>

My dad is an alcoholic. It’s funny how long it can take you to realize something that’s so obvious to everybody else. Like the downsides of combining drinking and driving.

> _“He’s been drinking again. Are you sure we should let him drive?” Den had been gone for four years. He had a fresh perspective on normal._
> 
> _“He’s always drinking, Den. Hasn’t killed hisself yet,” Bear grunted._
> 
> _Sam rolled her eyes. “No, but I’m’a kill him if I’ve gotta sit next to him in the cab for forty minutes. C’mon, sit in the back with me. You know if you don’t he’ll just bitch at you about something for the whole time. Let Mom deal with him—at least she chose to get stuck with him, God knows why,” still talking, Sam dragged me towards the back of the truck, away from the door of the extended cab. I climbed into the bed, not needing much convincing. My brothers followed, like they always do._
> 
> _Except Merlin, who wasn’t following anyone. He was grounded._

It’s the story of my life that I realize this during the car crash and not anytime helpful. Like before climbing into the truck he’s driving that’s carrying my whole world, excepting one 13-year-old fragment.

><>       ><>       ><>       ><>

I am the only one moving. I pretend I can hear them breathing, even though the rush of blood in my ears is too loud for me to hear anything else. They’re just napping while we wait for the ambulance to get here. I can hear the siren in the distance. Maybe the guy Dad hit had a cellphone. Otherwise we’ll be here for hours until someone drives past and finds us.

> _“How long has it been?” I was morbidly curious._
> 
> _“Two hours since I called it in,” Dad answered, weaving on his feet as he peered through the binoculars._
> 
> _I took them from him and he used the excuse to head for the cooler. We were anchored off the gravel spit, and could normally just see the top six feet of a roof of a house behind a scruffy tundra rise over the cliff of the riverbank, maybe three miles away. We had no way of reaching it._
> 
> _Today, that roof was on fire. I looked through the binoculars._
> 
> _The flames had to be twelve feet high now. I could hear them from here, roaring wild and fearsome._

I can’t see through the spiderweb cracks in the safety glass of the back window. It’s dark in the cab, even though it’s bright out here. They’re probably napping too.

><>       ><>       ><>

The sun is so bright my eyes are burning and tearing up. It’s strange that I’m crying, because I can’t even feel—

><>       ><>     

I feel pressure. Pressure where Den’s head is on my lap, pressure against my fingers as I pet his hair and pretend it isn’t tacky with blood.

I feel cold. My jacket is wet. The wind cuts through me like I’m not here.

I feel dizzy. My jacket isn’t normally red. Usually it’s blue. When did it turn red?

I feel happysadangry Merlin isn’t here. Denial is starting to crap out on me now.

I feel numb. Is this what shock feels like?

I feel nothing.

><>

> _“Denny’s home early! We’re going out to the D &D to celebrate his fancy diploma tonight,” Sam called me as soon as Denny was dropped off. Denny’d flown home a day early as a surprise, and caught a ride out to our parents’ place in the back of some fisherman’s truck. Sam was obviously thrilled. Denny’d always been her favorite—not that I could complain, seeing as he was mine too. But then, they were all my favorite. I loved my siblings to pieces, even when, like Merlin, they were being little dicks for five months straight.  _
> 
> _“I’ll be there. I’ve just got to finish up this weld, then I’ll head out to Mom’s. Do you think I should bring my car?”_
> 
> _“Nah, just the quad. You know Dad’s gonna insist on driving all his grownup babies around, nostalgia and shit,” Sam laughed. She got on better with him now that she lived in the lower 48 and never saw him except for once-a-year visits._
> 
> _“I guess Merman's almost a grownup, isn’t he? That’s frightening, Merman in high school next year. Anyway, I’ll be there soon. Give Den a noogie from me to tide him over.”_
> 
> _“Kay, Kaylee. You need to stop abandoning me with all the testosterone when I visit, you know? Next time I’m crashing at yours.”_

><>      ><>      ><>      ><>      ><>      ><>      ><>       ><>

I lost my whole world that day.

I called the station after eleven, when they hadn’t gotten back yet. I was starting to get worried, but figured they were probably trying to sober Dad up, or that maybe he’d gotten another DUI.

They didn’t find them until after I called. Nobody knew there was anything wrong.

They were all already dead.

Kaylee and Denny would still be alive if I’d called just a couple hours earlier, when I started worrying.

Everyone might still be alive if I hadn’t gotten grounded—Dad was starting to teach me how to drive, and was more likely to let me drive than anyone else, because he’d be teaching me and not just too drunk to drive—Dad hated anyone thinking he was a lightweight.

I stayed with the neighbors that night. “Thirteen is old enough to stay in a house alone,” I told them. “Not tonight,” they told me. “We’re here,” they told me. But I didn’t care where they were. They weren’t who I’d lost.

The last thing I’d said to my mom was that I hated her, and that I wished she was dead.

Two weeks later I’m living in fucking Alabama with the weird uncle no one ever really talked about. Him and Aunt Hunith—my mom’s sister who travels so much she doesn’t even have an apartment or a house, just lives out of hotel rooms—are my only two blood relatives left in the world. I went from a giant, loud, crazy family to a small, quiet, sad one.

Sometimes I feel like Merlin Emrys died in that crash too. This new Merlin, Alabama Merlin, is someone else. Alabama Merlin knows what frog-gigging is, and doesn’t feel like his world shattered around him and left him the only whole living thing ever to exist. If not, at least Alabama Merlin’s better at pretending than I am.


End file.
